Lord Apache (9 page)

He drew on the cigar. "So it is said."

"I cast up my horoscope last night, by candlelight. Right now is really
not
a good time to travel anyway. Jupiter is in Aries, I think —maybe it's the other way around—but traveling is not advisable for a Pisces person like me—or Beulah, either."

There was something almost beseeching in the way she spoke. Casting aside the stub of cigar, he rose to join her in the gloaming. Eggleston was busy helping Mrs. Glore put supper things away on improvised shelves. "I believe," he said, "it is somehow unwise for you to travel to Prescott, though I must admit I am not sure of the real reason."

For a moment she tensed; he feared that she was going to be angry again. But finally she sighed, looking at him with mournful eyes. "Life," she murmured, "is very difficult for a spirited woman. A woman alone, I mean, who has to fight for what she wants. Mr. Drumm, I shouldn't want you to think Beulah and me ungrateful, kind as you've been to us, taking us in and all."

He was looking beyond her, staring into the darkness along the river.

"What is it?" she asked.

An owl hooted, the sound eerie against the faint splashing of waters. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

"I heard the owl."

Shaking his head, he moved slowly toward the awning where his needle-gun was propped against the table. Washing beans for the morrow, Eggleston watched him.

"Don't anybody move!" Drumm warned. He picked up the rifle. The sound of the hammer was loud as he cocked it. Holding the camphene lamp, he walked again toward the reeds. "Who's there?"

Nothing moved; the slight breeze had died at dusk. The stalks of bamboo stood stiffly erect, unmoving.

"Who's there?" he called, waving the muzzle of the rifle menacingly. "Hallo, there! Throw down your weapons! We have you surrounded!"

The sound of his bravado died away in the silence; the reeds still did not move. There was only the faint gurgling of water in the pools of the Agua Fria.

Feeling foolish, he started to go back to the camp, when the reeds wavered, trembled.

"Come out!" Drumm ordered. "Come out with your hands in the air, or I'll shoot!"

The reeds parted. A wizened face, small and brown like that of a monkey, peered through.

"Careful!" Drumm warned. "No sudden moves!"

The intruder was an Indian, but not an Apache; at least, he did not resemble Agustín and his raiders. He was below even the height of the stocky Apaches, and dressed in a ragged pair of once-white pantaloons and leather jerkin. The feet were bare and horny; a tangle of glass beads hung around his neck. He wore a tattered felt hat that once must have belonged to a white man.

"Keep your hands over your head!" Drumm ordered.

In response to his gesture the wrinkled little man shuffled from the thicket. He was trembling; in the light of the camphene lamp the seamed and leathery face worked convulsively.

"Why, the poor thing!" Mrs. Glore murmured. "He's
scared
!"

Drumm gestured. "Search him for concealed weapons, Eggie! This man could be dangerous! He is certainly not one of our good simple English countrymen!"

The valet patted the intruder's clothing, rummaged through the leather bag the man carried, tossed a hatchetlike knife with a cord-wrapped handle to his master.

"No firearms, certainly," he reported." and in his knapsack are only some of those flat pancakes—"

"Tortillas, they are called."

"And little sacks filled with seeds—beans, peas, Indian corn, things like that."

Mrs. Glore pushed between Drumm and the visitor. "My goodness!" she protested. "You're scaring the tripes out of him with that gun! He's hungry—look how his ribs stick out!" Ladling beans into a tin plate, she offered it to the man.

Warily he eyed it; then the monkey's paw of a hand shot out and he snatched the plate. Squatting, the newcomer dredged food into his mouth with his fingers, finally wiping the plate clean with a tortilla from his knapsack.

"There—I told you!" Mrs. Glore said. "There's no harm in the poor creature!"

Drumm lowered his gun, but continued to observe the Indian.

"He is probably a Pima, or a Papago. They are peaceful farmers, and the seeds he carries very likely represent his only wealth."

The little man got to his feet and made a gesture that indicated fealty and respect anywhere in the world. He spoke rapidly, hands fluttering like small birds in a kind of sign language. Drawing a finger across his throat, he pointed toward the Mazatzals. Putting his hands over his face, he cowered and held out two fingers, working them back and forth in a manner reminiscent of a man running.

"He is fleeing from the Apaches!" Drumm decided. "That is certainly his meaning!" Striding to the dying fire, he kicked the embers. "Eggie, put out the lamp! His presence here may mean that Agustín and his cutthroats are not far behind!" He opened the case, loaded his Tatham pistols, and handed them to Phoebe Larkin.

"If we are attacked and there is no hope, do me the favor of shooting Mrs. Glore directly. Save the other pistol for yourself. There are horrible tales of what the red brutes do to captured white women!"

"I'm not afraid," Phoebe said. Her voice trembled only slightly. "If one of them comes near me, he will get what for!"

"That's right," Mrs. Glore said. "We are from far up the holler, and was weaned on a bullet!"

"Eggie," Drumm instructed, "you and I will defend the camp from the earthworks we have dug. Bring all our weapons and cartridges. A flask of water, too, and a dish of Mrs. Glore's beans to stay us during the night's watch."

Phoebe touched Drumm's arm. "You—you be careful, now!"

She was looking directly at him, eyes luminous in the starlight. He expected to find fear there, perhaps panic. Instead there was a queer look he did not have time to analyze.

"I will be careful," he assured her. "Now you and Mrs. Glore go into the hut and get some sleep. If anything untoward happens, you will certainly be aware of it."

The camp settled into stillness. A rind of moon hung low in the western sky and finally disappeared. An infinity of stars sprinkled the sky, so densely distributed that it was difficult to separate one from the other. Only the Pole Star seemed a separate entity, hanging high over distant Prescott.

"That Mrs. Glore," Eggleston said softly in the darkness, "is an unusual woman, Mr. Jack!"

Warmth fled the earth, evaporating quickly into the dry air. Along the river the coyotes started their nightly chorus. The sound was almost welcome to Jack Drumm, a familiar thing against the menacing uncertainty of an Apache attack.

"She is, indeed," he agreed. "A good cook, also." He squatted in the trench, peering over the parapet of stones, watching, listening. Orion's belt crawled slowly overhead.

"A hard worker, Mrs. Glore," Eggleston continued. "Very clean and neat, also!"

"That, too," Drumm agreed.

The wound on his cheek itched. Though it had partially healed and the ugly scab had fallen away, he was conscious of its disfiguring nature. The beard, now a good half inch long, covered most of it; he was grateful for that.

Through the night they lay behind the parapet, tense and expectant. Eggleston slept—Jack Drumm was sure he once heard a muffled snore, quickly cut off—but Drumm himself could not think of sleep. Cramped and sore, he stared into the starlit darkness with eyes aching from the intensity of his gaze. He had two females to protect; it was a heavy responsibility.

He felt, rather than saw, the pallid dawn. Well, it had all been a false alarm, he supposed. Eggleston truly slept, now; his mouth was open, a lock of thinning hair fallen over his face so that the valet looked almost like a child—a lost middle-aged child. Drumm smiled paternally.

"Eggie," he whispered. "Wake up! The night is almost over!"

Yawning and stretching, the valet sat up. "For a moment there," he admitted, "I think I dozed a little."

Drumm started to laugh but bit it off hard. From the river, where they must have lurked unseen, the Apaches burst out on the camp, a dozen or more of them. Silently and viciously they spread about the camp, intent on murder and rapine. Clubbing the butt of his carbine into a looming painted face, Jack Drumm had the satisfaction of seeing the man stumble backward, dropping a ribboned hatchet. Pulling the trigger, he saw another attacker drop his lance and fall. At his feet Eggleston knelt, aiming carefully, to drop an Apache who was running toward the reed hut.

"Good shot, Eggie!" Drumm shouted.

Perhaps low on ammunition in their mountain fastness, the raiders hoped to slaughter them with knife and club and hatchet. But this time Drumm and his valet were prepared. Together they laid down a blistering fire, forcing the Apaches to retort in kind. Though the big Sharp's rifle was a single-shot weapon, Eggleston had his pistol, and Drumm covered him with carbine fire while the valet reloaded. The survivors quickly took cover and for a moment the din ceased. Drumm peered over the parpet but withdrew when a bullet ricocheted from a flat boulder and caromed off, singing wickedly. In the first rays of the rising sun he saw a puff of smoke from the reed hut, a flash of orange; an attacker running toward the reed hut suddenly bent over, as if struck by an immense wind, and crumpled. Phoebe Larkin and Mrs. Glore were defending themselves. He hoped they would save the last cartridges for each other.

In the brief lull he swung to scan the perimeter of the trench, fearing that a new attack was planned from another quarter. He was just in time to see the Union Jack, his own Union Jack, fluttering high over the far side of the parapet. Now they were attacking from that side.

"They are coming, Eggie!" he shouted. "Be ready!"

The flag was carried by the man in the ornamented leather hat—surely Agustín himself—whom Jack remembered from the first raid. Bone whistle between his teeth, keening like the call of a wild animal, Agustín leaped into the trench. Behind him swarmed the rest of the attackers.

The chieftain swung a gleaming machete, as it was called. Drumm blocked it with the barrel of his carbine. Iron clanged against iron. Agustín dropped the swordlike weapon, cursing an Apache curse. As he danced in pain, Drumm caught Agustín's brown hand in his and twisted hard, bending the wrist backward in a jujitsu maneuver he remembered from Kurushiki, in Japan. Agustín dropped the flag. They both scrabbled on the ground for it.

Wrenching at the staff, Jack tore the flag from Agustín's grasp but the wily Apache kicked him in the groin. Giddy with pain, he doubled over, hearing at the same time a woman's scream. It seemed very far away, distant, almost like a voice from beyond the Styx.

Aware of a sudden shadow, he rolled away in panic. But it was Eggleston standing over him, swinging the big Sharp's like a club. The weapon spun in a deadly arc, the steel buttplate crashing into a rag-bound skull.

"Get back there!" the valet snarled, and broke a man's bones with another vicious swipe of the butt. "Ho, sirrah, stand back! Mr. Jack, are you all right?"

Someone leaped on the valet, bearing him down. The trench filled with smoke, confusion, wolfish snarls, the report of firearms. Drumm tried to get to his feet but could only writhe in agony, clutching his groin. He was dimly aware of Agustín snatching up the maltreated banner, holding it triumphantly aloft where it caught the rays of the rising sun.

Almost resignedly Drumm closed his eyes, waiting for the end. This was his last sunrise. Lieutenant George Dunaway had been right. He should have—how was it the lieutenant had put it?
Shuck off all this junk and ride as fast as you can to Prescott before you get bushwhacked
. Interesting word, bushwhacked! Now he had been bushwhacked. Never again would he look on green grass and blooming roses, never again see Clarendon Hall, never again see Andrew and Cornelia Newton-Barrett and—

Impatient at death's delaying, he finally opened his eyes. That was when he saw Phoebe Larkin. Like an avenging fury, she stood on the parapet, pistol in each hand, squinting along the barrels with such professionalism that he knew instantly the derringer in her bosom was a well-known tool, her familiarity with weapons a matter of custom. Probably she was a professional murderess, though this category of employment was not one he had previously come on. But murderess or not, he did not want her to die.

"Run!" he yelled. "Run away, Phoebe! Save yourself!"

Propping his body on outstretched arms, he tried to rise. But a last bullet from the fleeing Apaches struck him heavily in the shoulder. The force of the impact spun him sideways so that he fell with face pressed against the dew-wet earth. He became very tired. Curious, he tried to touch his wounded shoulder. The effort was painful, and his fingers came away warm and wet.
Blood—his blood, Drumm blood
.

He continued to lie in that strange position, cheek pressed against the ground and buttocks in the air, hearing the sounds of battle grow fainter and ever fainter.

When he awoke Jack Drumm did not know where he was, even less where he had been. He seemed swimming in some nameless void, a fathomless pool where there was no up or down, no now or then—only the cloying blackness. From time to time he caught a glimpse of light, perhaps a lamp burning in a window a long way across the moors. At times there was a face lit by the lamp glow, but so faint and blurred that he could not recognize it. Too, at times he heard sounds: voices, small rustlings, footfalls. When he cried out, tried to reach these evidences of humanity, the dark enveloped him again and he sank again into the void.

Finally, with the tenacity of the Drumms, he decided that this business of the darkness was very silly. If he was alive, then a black void was no place to waste time. If he was dead, there must be something beyond the void; pearly gates, perhaps, and a waiting harp—or fiery furnaces. In either case it seemed best to find out immediately.

Opening his eyes, he stared dazedly about. It took a long time to identify the splash of color on the back of a folding canvas chair near the bed. Finally he identified it as a China silk kerchief—a woman's kerchief, such as females used to bind their hair or secure in place a bonnet. Exhausted by the concentration, he lay back; the familiar void once again engulfed him.